Begin with the End in Mind

No matter what your plan, figure out what you want to happen in the end before you launch yourself into action. If you want to capture a stronghold mostly intact, that limits your options somewhat, since you can’t raze it to the ground.

The key to taking over a stronghold is in either capturing the leaders and breaking the staff or simply driving everyone out. The quicker this is done, the better. If you give the departing tenants a chance, they’ll take everything they can with them and go out of their way to damage the rest.

Some people take their evictions personally. They may leave booby-traps behind for you or even burn the place to the ground or reduce it to rubble. In their minds, if they can’t have the place, no one will.

The ex-tenants who leave quickly and quietly are potentially even more dangerous. They know every secret of the stronghold like the backs of their hands, and their memories can be long and vengeful. Unless they are killed or imprisoned in the process of losing their home to you, you can be sure that they’ll return, and this time they’ll make use of all the tricks discussed in this section.

If you want to be smart and ruthless about it, you’ll cripple such people—figuratively, at least, if not literally. Doing so to villains may not cause many characters much pause, but it’s not always such a clear decision. Harming a surrendered captive is not the hallmark of those of good alignment, and your Dungeon Master is fully justified in applying the appropriate penalties to those who commit such crimes.

Still, dismantling a villain’s organization and scattering his underlings to the four winds is a good start. It will take him time to recover from such a devastating defeat, to regroup his forces around him. If you’re smart about it, you’ll use that time to transform his stronghold into your own, plugging any holes in its defense that you capitalized upon yourself.

Of course, many villains escape rather than surrender. Whether you wish to pursue them or not is your call. If it’s wise to do so or not depends on the state of your forces once you capture the villain’s stronghold and whether you would be overextending yourself to launch such a manhunt. Many invaders decide that it’s not worth it, at least in the short run.

One Man’s Villain

Canny evil foes do their best to confuse the issue by posing as respectable people in their own locales. In fact, while an evil character may be a hated villain in one part of the world, many such people are lauded at heroes in and around their own homes. The reason is simple: Only the worst villains are dumb enough to make a mess in their own backyard. Unless these vile people are all-powerful rulers of the land, they have to live next to these people in their neighborhoods, purchase supplies from them, and generally get along.

That said, your character may not be able to depend on help from the locals to take down villains who take care to do good works close to home. Actually, it can be just the opposite. These same people might actually rally around the villain and come to his aid. They have nothing against him—quite the opposite. They respect and even love him.

Many such villains go to great lengths to hide the true nature of their alignment from those around them. A simple misdirection spell is good enough for temporary protection, and a ring of mind shielding does an even better job of concealing any ill intent.

Simply wearing a ring of mind shielding isn’t proof enough of a character’s evil intent, of course. Many characters wear similar rings to protect their thoughts from those who would pry into their minds. Pointing out that a person is wearing such a ring would hardly be enough to convince his compatriots that he’s actually out and out evil.

Once the villain has been dispatched, the character can try to find some kind of evidence to justify what she’s done to him. Even the most careful evildoers often have some proof of their villainy hidden somewhere in their homes. There’s the off chance that this won’t be found, but that may be a risk your character is willing to take. As the saying goes, it’s easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission.